i3 saw its latest addition to the tool shop Tuesday night with the addition of a massive Bridgeport mill as well as a honking 14×40 Acer 1440G lathe. While both were pre-loved, with the lathe needing a great deal of “rinsing” before use, they are both in excellent condition and will make for a wonderful expansion of our machining capabilities. The lathe also had the added bonus of coming with a good deal of tooling, finally making viable my plan of creating a 4 foot candle holder. While I don’t currently have a problem holding 4 foot candles, or any 4 foot candles at all for that matter, I’ll be the only one prepared the next time a giant birthday cake shows up!

Meanwhile, as the literally tons of tools were being “gently” maneuvered into place, many of our other members were engaged in some decidedly less brute force pursuits, participating in the evening’s papercraft meetup. Rather than one of our usual classes with an instructor leading the group, this was run much more as an open forum, with several people taking the reigns and teaching the rest of the group various crafts from origami to paper star beads. The meetup also served to improve the aesthetic qualities of the space by hanging origami cranes and other creations from the floor of the loft area.

Tuesday saw the first step in our plan to revive our class schedule now that our space and sleep schedules have recovered from Maker Faire, and what better way to get started than to have two illustrious makers as our guest lecturers? These two giants were none other than Mitch Altman of Noisebridge and TV-B-Gone fame and Jimmie P. Rodgers of LOLshield fame both of whom are currently on a road trip to promote their clever kits and educate young and old about how easy and fun soldering can be.

Well here we are finally! The weekend we have all been working towards for weeks and months. i3 Detroit is proud to announce that we are holding the official after party for Maker Faire Detroit 2010. We have a lot of friends in town from other hackerspaces across Canada and the US so what better way to celebrate Maker Faire and all of us being in Detroit together than to throw a party. We would like to invite you and all of your friends to come out to i3 Detroit this Saturday July 31st 2010 to i3 Detroit for drinks, snacks, live DJ and great company.

Tabletop gaming has been a great way for friends to get together face-to-face, socialize and have fun since prehistoric times. Now, with advances in technology that allow realistic, high-excitement thrills on a TV or computer screen, people are spending much less time in actual contact with other humans.

While advances in gaming technology have created some pretty amazing games for individuals to play on their computers and consoles, our social skills are on the decline. Spend some time with other people; a good game of Risk is often still the best way to game while enjoying the direct company of others. Or, if a game of Scrabble is more to your taste, it will broaden your vocabulary and you’ll make friends a lot better than you will with even the best FPS on the Xbox. So shut off your computer or gaming console, and head out to I3 Detroit on Saturday, July 10th starting at 2pm for some tabletop gaming. A number of games will be there already, or you can bring your own favorite game that you’d like to play with others.

On Saturday, June 26th, from 11AM – 4PM, we are at Bed-a-Palooza in Troy at Trainers Academy with Retro Doggy Rescue. The goal of the event is to build 100 dog beds for Michigan shelters, where shelter dogs currently sleep on the floor. This week has been a flurry of PVC and we have cut and assembled the 100 bed frames. The day of the event, we will oversee the attaching of fabric to build each bed into a sturdy hammock. We are also hosting a BBQ at the event that will start at Noon.

Nemo

Meet Nemo. Matt will be bringing the Skee Ball machine to help raise money for this little cutie who has a stage 3 heart murmur and has to go see a cardiologist.

Come one, come all! The public is welcome to stop by and join the fun! Trainers Academy is located at 1016 Troy Court, Troy, 48083. More information can be found at their website: www.woofology.com.